sacd,vinyl, and rebook....

"sacd is like vinyl without the clicks and pops" (NOT TRUE)

"sacd is a marginal improvement, if any, over redbook" (MAYBE)

"sacd is a smoke and mirrors ht campaign designed for multi-channel use and copyright protection agendas" (DON'T KNOW)

SACD is usually a marginal improvement over CD if any, see the Stereophool article on Norah Jones this month. There was NO change and they validated it. They queried the recording company and I have not heard the answer yet.

As for vinyl, when the BEST of SACD gets close to vinyl I'll buy more, until then me, and my Keith Monks will continue to search the used market and tolerate the occaisional pop and click.

BTW: Vinyl burned to CD on a simple HK CDR20 unit sounds much better than commercial CD's. Whaz up with this??
Until my car takes vinyl, it's the best medium out there, and at about 50 cents each to burn a disc to vinyl and make it transportable, well it's a deal. Yeah I pay for the CD-Music format.

Even people I have given a dup of a disc from vinyl to ask about the little click from time to time. I explain it's just old fashioned wax, and watch their mouth drop.

Hmm, Vinyl is the way it should be.

loon

SACD..with its DSD digital protocol is definetely better than redbook. I can easily hear that on my modest system.

*however*
w/the right DAC, redbook is not dissapointing.

i've only heard one high end vinyl setup, and it was like liquid music pouring over me.
I have yet to get that experience w/any digital front end...but then again i've never heard really high-end digi..something like an EMMLabs DAC6 and SACD transport...
or the Sony 9000ES SACD and matching reciever that takes pure DSD over i.Link format.
I'm convinced that DSD is a better sounding format than PCM.

From what i've heard from people who have had the exposure (and whos ears I trust) is that anything Ed Meitner gets inside of tends to sound very good... and that until you've heard something like the EMM labs equipment, then you have not fully heard digitals potential.
There are plenty of great DACs out there, but one that upsamples to DSD designed by a guy who has been so involved on that protocol for so long...that says something (to me). And from what I understand that is what the DAC 6 does.

fwiw, that is also what the sony STR-DA2,3,5,9000ES digital recievers do if you feed them a PCM signal.

Any way....this peaks my interest to stay with digital for the long haul as I *know* that the technology to unlock those bits will just continue to improve and get cheaper, where as vinyl doesn't seem to sway in that direction, me thinks.

In my opinion, there's a lot of musical information buried in redbook cds that, once extracted, can make the differences of any format negligible.

I consider dedicating much time toward extensive vibration control, AC treatments, and line-conditioning to be a great equalizer in this regard.

-IMO

I hope everyone read the link cited by Albertporter (11/3).

Two things are obvious to me.

1. Digital PCM may be imperfect, but 24 bits are better than 16, and 96 KHz is better than 44.

2. SACD superiority is a snow job by Sony, and many audiophiles have been fooled.